U.S. briefing
Daniel Lewin's path from computer research to co-founding Akamai
Lewin co-founded Akamai Technologies in 1998 after pursuing research at MIT on helping websites handle heavier traffic.
Daniel Lewin co-founded Akamai Technologies in 1998 with his professor Tom Leighton and other partners. Two years earlier, he had received a scholarship to pursue a PhD at MIT, where his research developed a practical application of consistent hashing to help websites accommodate higher traffic.
Born in Denver, Colorado, Lewin moved to Israel at 14 and later served in the military's Sayeret Matkal unit. After his military service, he worked full-time as a researcher at IBM in Haifa while completing two undergraduate degrees at the Technion.
At IBM, Lewin was responsible for developing and supporting Genesys, a tool for verifying processors. The Technion named him its Outstanding Student in Computer Engineering in 1995. His family life also grew alongside his career: he married Anne, and they had two sons, Itamar and Eitan.